


singe

by younglemonade



Series: Day of the Summer 2017 [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, guest appearance from a baby, i love these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 14:44:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12633222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglemonade/pseuds/younglemonade
Summary: fifth day of the summer: skimmons + baby whisperer/ / /Daisy smiles at her. “Jems, it’s okay. He’s not going to write you a bad report card, or something. Besides, it’s not like you could do any worse than I am, huh?”As if to prove her point, the baby lets out a fresh wail, and at that kind of frequency, he could probably shake the town better than Daisy.





	singe

**Author's Note:**

> Note accompanying this chapter has been removed.

Daisy has always been good with kids. Toddlers, children, preteens – they’re more than happy to follow her around, on some level aware that Daisy’s only pretending to be a grownup, really. Not to mention, she can corral them almost anywhere with a well-placed _I bet you can’t_ , and an enthusiastic high-five.

It’s a side effect of growing up in orphanages and group homes. It was kill or be killed in terms of managing tiny people, and Daisy has a full set of survival skills. Reverse psychology? Check. Big smile? Check. Fake disciplinary tone she pirated from her fifth grade teacher? Check. 

But… she’s never been good with babies. She never had to be, and never got a chance to learn. Babies at orphanages were like lightning – there, seen for a second, and then gone again just as quickly. Because _everyone_ wanted babies, wanted freshly-minted kids to start their families from scratch with, wanted the nature and none of the nurture. They wanted a toothless infant that would grin at them on reflex, not a six-year-old who flinched when they broke dishes and watched them distrustfully. Daisy even kinda hated babies when she was growing up – which she realises now is totally stupid, it’s not like the baby had any say in things – but she envied them, and how easy it was, to have somebody love you because you were nobody, when all the times she tried to be sweet and smart and patient weren’t enough.

It’s been years, though, since those days, and Daisy’s life is now definitively awesome, if she does say so herself. She’s got cool-as superhero powers that she can almost always control, a rag tag cluster of friends she’s die for and still beat ruthlessly at Monopoly, and has been with epic biochemist and love of her life, Jemma Simmons, for three years. Daisy’s come out on top, as far as she’s concerned, even if she has been shot a few times. She’s moved beyond her dislike of babies and hatred of families, although this baby she’s just rescued from a falling building – well, he does _not_ seem to agree. In fact, he’s disagreeing extremely loudly, as if he thinks that Daisy is going to drop him in the ocean, or maybe cancel his favourite tv show. Do babies watch tv? Whatever.

Once she’s sure she’s out of the smoke, and that all the other people she’d rescued are well out of the danger zone, she turns her attention to the screaming infant in her arms.

“Where’s your mom, bud?” she asks, as though he might be able to tell her, and wrap this all up now. “Please stop screaming, I don’t know what to feed you to make you stop.” She hopes being frank with him will mean they can bargain like adults, but unfortunately, he has not reached the stage of childhood where negotiating is a way to stop them crying. Which sucks, because Daisy was always terrific at the classic, _well, you can hit him back, and then it’s even, right?_

She wasn’t even _supposed_ to be in that building. She and Jemma had just been walking by, on their way to some grocery shopping in between missions, when they’d seen fire licking out of the building’s windows and Daisy had been all _sorry babe, gotta go._ The worry lines made cute crinkles in Jemma’s face like they always did, but Daisy knew she was worried about the people already in side – Daisy can more than handle herself in a burning building that size these days.

And now she has this random baby to show for her heroics, which hopefully impressed her girlfriend, even though she does heroics every day. Oh shit, does she need to think of something else to impress Jemma? Maybe saving a baby will do it. Chicks dig that, right? Maybe Jemma is impressed with her superpowers, still, or perhaps her unique way of cheating at Uno. Either way, Daisy will have to revisit this later, because it’s super hard to think with Mr Mini shrieking his head off.

“Chill out, where’s the fire?” she mumbles to him, then laughs at her own joke, because he’s clearly not going to. It’s okay, it’s not insensitive; everyone is out and safe and the owner was probably insured.

She rounds the corner to where she left Jemma, but Jemma, predictably, is not there. Daisy casts around, and spots her with a group of slightly crispy looking individuals, coughing up the smoke in their lungs. She’s checking them over, full field-doctor, and Daisy knows she’ll only get in the way, but can’t help heading over anyway. It’s harder to appreciate how badass Jemma is when you’re the one who’s just been shot or stampeded or whatever, so she’s going to take this opportunity to gawk while she has it.

“Stay hydrated, and if you’re still worried, seek medical attention at the local ER. Get your partners or roommates to keep an eye on you too, okay?” Jemma is saying, giving them that smile, the one that would make anyone like her instantly, even if she was dangling them over a vat of lava with her hand resting against a big red button. It works on _everyone_ , and it especially works on Daisy. Luckily, Jemma’s gorgeousness is a power she uses only for good. Otherwise they’d have a real supervillain on their hands.

“Jemma. Jemma,” she calls out, and her girlfriend turns to look at her worriedly. “I seem to have acquired this tiny screaming gentleman.”

Daisy didn’t use her powers, so the few people who did notice her among the chaos simply think she’s a good Samaritan, here to help. There’s no phone footage to worry about, so they can linger if they need to.

“Oh, no,” Jemma breathes, and turns to the people she was just helping. “Is he any of yours?”

A few head shakes and they shuffle off.

“You know any biology tricks to keep him quiet? Like, is there an off-button on the mitochondria or something?” Daisy asks.

Jemma frowns. “Daisy, that would kill him. Also, they don’t have off-buttons. Also, even if they did, you couldn’t press them, because cells are extremely small -”

“I appreciate you trying to explain in normal people words, but I was just kidding. Anyway, I think he hates me. Do you want to try holding him?”

Jemma hesitates. “I – I don’t know all that much about kids. I only have an older brother, and -”

Daisy smiles at her. “Jems, it’s okay. He’s not going to write you a bad report card, or something. Besides, it’s not like you could do any worse than I am, huh?”

As if to prove her point, the baby lets out a fresh wail, and at that kind of frequency, he could probably shake the town better than Daisy.

“I guess it’s worth a try,” Jemma acknowledges, but she still wrings her hands together nervously, a gesture that always makes Daisy grin despite herself.

Carefully, she passes the baby over, trying not to let his head loll, because she’s pretty sure he doesn’t have, like, muscles at this age, or something. Truth be told, Daisy has no idea how to ballpark how old he is, but better safe than sorry.

It’s almost instant. The second the baby touches Jemma’s sweater, he huddles into her chest like a giant tick, quietening immediately.

Not that Daisy can blame him. Having Jemma that close _is_ very calming.

Jemma still has a slightly terrified look on her face, like she thinks she’ll suddenly drop him, or he’ll explode, or something. But the baby shares none of these fears, and is contentedly watching his fingers curl and uncurl around the hem of Jemma’s sweater like he does this every day.

“This… is okay, right?” Jemma asks, and Daisy nods, although they still both watch and wait, just in case he re-activates the waterworks.

Once it seems like they’re out of the woods, they start to walk him around the building, asking if anyone is the baby’s parent.

“The first floor office is an adoption agency,” one woman explains. “Sometimes people leave their children there, even though it isn’t an orphanage. It’s pretty crazy, but… well, people get desperate sometimes, I guess. And they figure that the agency will get them somewhere safe. So there’s a chance that baby doesn’t belong to anyone here.”

They wander around a bit more, just to be sure, talking to all the former workers who are watching at the firefighters like they’re a daytime soap special.

“Well… should we call Coulson?” Daisy asks.

“This is hardly SHIELD business,” Jemma points out. She looks down at the baby, still snuggled into her, awake but placid. Or maybe “dormant” is a better word, Daisy figures. “He’s so tiny, and adorable. I mean, of course I understand that there are lots of reasons someone might have to give up a baby, lots of very good reasons…”

Daisy gets what she means – looking down at such a tiny, round, happy face, it’s hard to understand how somebody could let him go. But Daisy knows first hand that a lot of kids who came to her orphanage did get far better lives than they otherwise would have, so even if her heart is uselessly going _aww_ , her brain gets it.

“Yeah, I guess,” Daisy agrees, wondering how normal adults deal with these sorts of things.

“Here, you take him again. I’m going to ask the firemen what we should do…” she trails off, passing the kid back to Daisy, who accepts him tentatively. Of course, he starts howling immediately, but they both work to tune it out.

Just as Jemma’s about to wander off, Daisy calls her back, panic rising in her chest. “Jems, I think we gotta go to the ER.”

“What?”

“I think he’s sick. He’s hot. Like, crazy, mad fever hot.” He isn’t sweating, but he’s searing against her arms, his tiny body like a seven-pound ember.

Jemma looks stricken. “Do you think his nappy could be, I don’t know, on fire, inside, and we missed it? I’ve heard of that -”

“His what?”

“His _diaper_ , Daisy.”

But his whole body is hot, and she can’t smell smoke or burning skin on him at all. “No, he was cool when you were holding him, right?”

That’s when she realises he’s starting to glow.

Quickly, she dashes down an alley, away from the people, having no idea what is about to happen but certain it isn’t good. Minimise civilian casualties, that’s the ole motto.

He’s almost burning her hands through her gloves; he’s far too hot to keep holding. She barely manages to find a spot of clean asphalt to place him delicately on before he straight-up bursts into flames. He’s still warbling at a million decibels, but in a grumpy way, not an I’m-burning-alive way. Which, for the record, is the only reason to scream as loud as he is, if you ask Daisy. No one has.

“I did not expect that,” Jemma admits softly. She watches him carefully, looking for any sign that the flames are hurting him. Tentatively, she reaches out.

“No, babe, he’s way hot. The flames might not affect him, but look.” She shows Jemma the beginnings of the welts on her hands.

But, of course, Jemma “scientific curiosity” Simmons touches him anyway, a gentle hand resting on the top of his tiny head. She barely has a second to wince before the flames die off completely, and he stares up at her. His little hands reach up and grasp at the air in front of her, and Jemma carefully picks him up.

“He’s cool again.”

“I guess we know how the fire started, then,” Daisy grins. This has been much more fun than grocery shopping, which is significantly less amusing when not done at two am and when Jemma actually has a list. Not that sneaking things into the cart isn’t a laugh and a half, but meeting a baby arsonist is something she can cross off her bucket list. “So this _is_ SHIELD business.”

Jemma kisses the top of the baby’s head, looking down at him more happily than most people probably would when confronted with an unpredictable fire grenade activated by infantile mood swings. “You are _interesting_ , aren’t you?” she whispers to him. “And very cute. I wonder what’s going on with you?” He coos at her. “Yes, quite. Interesting hypothesis,” she teases him softly, and Daisy thinks she’s probably excited to have found someone other than Fitz who won’t beg for _English, please_ , if she tries to talk science to them. Fire Baby can’t understand either way. “And then,” Jemma continues, “we will find a nice, safe family for you to live with.”

Daisy feels a stab of pity for the kid. Sure, he’s a baby, but it’s got to be hard to get adopted when you can inadvertently burn down your orphanage. Or the home of any foster parents you might wrangle.

But Jemma is pretty and smiling and Fire Baby is cute and smiling and Daisy just watches them for a while. Jemma would probably say that the baby is too young to smile on anything other than reflex, but it looks genuine to Daisy.

She’ll call Coulson in a sec.

And then Jemma is reaching out, pulling her close, kissing her soft but long. “And you were very brave in there,” she says, nodding to the still-smouldering building.

Daisy shrugs. “It was nothing.”

Jemma shakes her head. “Not to all those people, or the baby, or me.”

It’s kinda stupid that Jemma can still make her blush so easily. But she does, effortlessly. Even the baby is probably judging her.

“All right, little man,” Daisy says. “Let’s get you back to headquarters.”


End file.
